“Have you seen Darius?” he asked, speaking very slowly.
The old man blinked twice. He tapped his ear and shook his head.
“The Okitchawa,” Jake said.
The old man’s befuddled expression cleared, and he grinned at Jake, revealing a mouth entirely devoid of teeth.
“Yes,” he said, in a croaking lisp, the Cree words coming back to Jake with a certain tickle in his cortex, the old rhythm of his first language. “The dance!”
“You saw Darius at the dance?”
The old man nodded. “Everyone. At the dance.”
Jake turned to go. The old man clawed at him, his fingernails scratching at Jake’s soiled shirt. “Everyone is there,” he said, his tone insistent. “Everything. Why I’m going. It’s been . . .” his eyes wandered off, searching the darkened woods for something, “a lifetime,” he said at last, his voice now shaking with terror, or perhaps elation. “Lifetimes since the old ways have held sway.”
“What?”
The old man’s mouth curled into his toothless grin again. “Go. They wait for you.” Jake turned and ran. The sound of the drums grew louder, the tempo faster. Jake could see flashes of fire through the trees now, the flames from the big fire almost reaching the tops of the balsam trees, thirty feet up.
He slowed as he reached the edge of the clearing and veered off into the woods, the silhouettes of dancing people flickering through the trees. The firelight bounced off of dozens of cars. The new fingernail moon had slipped behind some thin clouds, and the wind was picking up once again, sending the clouds racing across the moon’s crescent face. Jake could feel the faint heat from the fire even here. Closer to the fire the men and boys would be dressed in summer clothes, some in not much more than loincloths.
The beating of the drums was constant and the dancers moved as they always did, the adults nearest the fire, the children dancing in their shadows, even the two- and three-year-olds learning the rhythms of the dance. It had always amazed Jake and it still amazed him now—even caught deep in his dread, his mind working around the Question—to see how the toddlers could abandon their inherent clumsiness for brief moments, dancing in the twisting and flexing shadows of their fathers and uncles. On the outside were the old men, the elders, forming an outer ring. The First Dance for some, the last for others.
The wind picked up suddenly, and the flames blew sideways, causing the men on the downwind side to flare outward from the intense heat. Jake waited for the gust to blow itself out, but the wind continued to blow, quickly reaching a gale-force-level intensity, as though a low-pressure system had plopped down in the woods opposite him. The drum beats slowed, then stopped. The massive bonfire was nearly horizontal and people were scrambling out of its way, scooping up children and snatching blankets.
Jake stepped to the edge of the clearing. He was plainly visible, but nobody looked his way. They were all focused on the suddenly out-of-control fire, the intense heat. Already, the grass on the downwind side was scorched black. The flames roared with the wind, dancing and darting toward a cluster of people. One of the children screamed, and as though waiting for the cue, several others joined in, their high cries swept from their mouths by the ferocious wind. The fire roared, a captive beast almost out of its cage.
Then the wind stopped, and the flames that had sprawled out along the ground shrank back within the rock boundary of the fire ring. Some of the adults glanced at each other uneasily, several looking at Jake.
He paid them no attention. Darius and Rachel had appeared at the edge of the scorched grass on the far side of the fire, Darius’s hand clenched around Rachel’s upper arm. Behind them was another man, a strangely bloated man, half bent over, his face hidden from view.
Darius’s face was scratched and bruised, and his eyes seemed to be composed entirely of reflected firelight, as did Rachel’s. There was something on his face, a growth, spreading from his right cheek to cover part of his nose and the side of his mouth. Neither seemed to recognize Jake, wedged within the group of Highbanks villagers staring at them. The other man was bent over and clutching himself, as though suffering from intestinal distress.
“Darius?”
An old lady moved out from the edge of the crowd. She was wrapped in a coarse shawl emblazoned with bright orange and pink chevrons. Her long gray hair had been tied in a bun, but the wind had pulled most of it free, and it now formed a tangled snarl around her small head. She was no more than five feet tall and couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds, but people withdrew as she strode forward. Her face was pinched and lined, the eyes hooded. Elsie. She was the only person Jake recognized, outside of Darius and Rachel.
She stopped a dozen feet away from Darius and drew up to her full height. “Darius, what have you brought us?”
Darius opened his mouth as if to speak, but instead he pushed something out of his mouth with his tongue. It landed with a small splat at his feet, a green glob of sodden moss. Elsie recoiled, and then she caught herself and squared her shoulders.
“You let that girl go,” Elsie said. “She doesn’t need to be held onto.”
Darius grinned, and the spaces between his teeth were colored dark green. He shook Rachel slightly. “We ran,” he whispered, his voice lisping and guttural at the same time. “Ran faasst.”
Something rippled under the growth on his cheek, swelling and then subsiding. His hair was longer than it had been just the day before, Jake realized. More hair puffed out of his shirt, long tangled lengths that were matted with the same growth covering his face. His eyes were wild, dancing in the light of the fire.
Elsie took a step forward. “You did good, Darius. You found them. Now you . . . you rest.”
Darius cocked his head, then turned to the other man, the bloated man with his face smeared with dirt. At first Jake did not recognize him, and then he did, picking out his features. Warren Campbell crabbed his way into the firelight. His once neatly combed gray hair was filled with leaves and plastered with mud. His eyes darted from the group back to Darius, not in fear but with some strange combination of cunning and subservience. Behind them the pine boughs scratched against each other in the wind, which was increasing in intensity again.
“Eat,” Darius said, his voice phlegmy and rough. “Show them your hunger.”
Warren fell to the ground and began grubbing in the packed dirt, his fingers hooked into the earth. He started cramming soil and leaves into his mouth, making loud smacking noises. His teeth grinded away at the small stones in the soil, chewing up the pulpy leaves and sod.
Jake watched, horrified. He had thought that the infestation was limited to one person, one medium at a time. But Warren was affected, too, and the greed that he had possessed for the samples was running rampant. Now his desire to take from the earth was manifested in this primal urge to consume. Soon enough, Jake thought, he’ll eat so much dirt his belly will burst.
“I’m hungry, too,” Darius said. A little of the old mischievous gleam came into his eyes. “Not for dirt.”
“Darius,” Elsie said. “You and your friend got into something. Some bad plants, maybe. You . . . you need to get some rest, let your mind clear up.”
“He was lost,” Darius said, his voice a scratching whisper. “Forgot who he was. I—we . . . reminded him.”
“Who’s we, Darius?”
He grinned, a green smear of teeth. “You know, Elsie. You know.”
“What would you have us do?” Elsie asked, her voice little more than a whisper.
Darius took a step forward, dragging Rachel with him. She was pale, her face slack, and Jake still couldn’t tell if she was in shock or under the spell of the same affliction as the rest of them. Warren hopped after Darius, his mouth caked with dirt.
“Give us one,” Darius said, his voice barely audible above the crackling of the fire. His eyes roamed over the children, tucked behind the legs of their parents. “One to run and play with.”
“No,” Elsie said.
&
nbsp; The purple bruise stood out in dark relief on Darius’s temple, the place where Jake had struck him the night before. Jake could even see the small hole in the hollow of his throat where he had pressed and twisted the splintered end of the shattered stick against his trachea. Jake should have finished it then and there instead of gloating, instead of savoring Darius’s terror.
“Just one,” Darius said. “And we will cast our eyes elsewhere.”
“No,” Elsie said. “Not that. Never that.”
You outran yourself, Jake thought, watching Darius. Whatever is driving you, it went faster and further than you realized. It’s already leapfrogged beyond all reason. Now you stand alone, and you demand choices that make sense only to you—or to whatever is wrapped inside your brain, whatever transferred from the ground to poor dying Henry, who was too weak to run, or didn’t want to. And then from Henry to you. Yes, you embraced it, and you ran with it, you certainly did. But you ran too fast, went too far.
“Just one,” Darius said. “One of your own accord. We need . . . we need something fresh.”
Several of the children had begun to cry. Elsie glanced behind her, then stepped forward, her voice firm. “Be gone,” she said. “Leave us.”
“We will come back,” Darius said, and again his face bulged and twisted under the growth. His jaw seemed to lengthen, to resemble a snout in the flickering light. “And when we do, it will be more than one that we take.”
“You’re not taking anyone,” Jake said. “Not one child.” He stepped forward. “Not Rachel.”
Darius’s hand moved to the back of Rachel’s neck. His lips parted, and a strange growling noise came from his throat, the cords of muscle in his neck twisting in the firelight. Jake was reminded of Greer, of his plea for help through his stiffening vocal cords. Was Darius really still in there, somewhere? It hardly seemed to matter.
Jake stepped forward, separating from the rest of the crowd and passing by Elsie. The heat was intense this close to the fire, and he could feel it baking into his bones, loosening his joints, the sweat pouring out of him and stinging his eyes. He stopped ten feet away from Darius. The wind was picking up again and it touched the sweat, made Jake hyperaware of the coolness on his hot skin. A few feet away Warren shuffled closer to the fire, then away, his bloated face smeared with dirt.
“Leave her.”
“You have not seen it,” Darius breathed. “Not yet. It is more than you would imagine. Greater and stronger and faster . . .” His eyes rolled back in his head, his green-stained teeth spreading open in a wolf’s smile.
“Rachel!” Jake called out.
Her head had been down. Now Darius tilted her head up and she looked at Jake with dulled and vacuous eyes. “She ran with us,” Darius said, “as did he.” Darius turned and regarded Warren, who was mumbling something fast and incomprehensible under his breath, his eyes alternating between the ground and the bluish core of the bonfire. “We had fun with him.”
“You’ve breathed in something, Darius,” Jake said. “It’s affecting your brain.”
Darius grinned. He had no weapon that Jake could see, but something about the way he held Rachel’s neck caused Jake to hold back.
Darius turned toward Jake. “Tell them,” he said. “Tell them what we found sleeping under the soil out there. It’s not a bad thing to have found.”
“Darius,” Jake said, “it’s time for you to go.”
“Yes,” Elsie said. “Go, but leave the girl.” She had reappeared out of the shadows, surrounded by several other women. To Jake’s surprise, he saw his mother was with them, older than he had imagined but still beautiful, her hair streaked with gray and the skin around her eyes crinkled into a fine bird’s nest of lines. Other women stepped forward, and the men followed, standing behind Elsie and Dawn Trueblood and the rest of the women. Someone had begun to murmur, a low singsong chant that several others picked up on.
“One,” Darius insisted.
“Leave us,” Elsie said, and to Jake it seemed as though she spoke not to Darius but to something behind his shoulder.
Darius stood looking at them. The wind was increasing steadily, ratcheting upward into gale force. Then he leaned forward and murmured something into Warren’s ear.
Warren shrieked, in horror or exultation it was impossible to tell, and flung himself forward. Jake sprang to the side, and Warren charged into the middle of the bonfire, stumbling over the tilted logs. Immediately, the smell of singed hair washed over them, and there was a series of small popping noises as his skin boiled and split. He exited the flames, arms outstretched and his clothes burning brightly, a plump scarecrow lit afire and come to life. He stumbled toward Jake, his shirt dripping off of him in burning ropes, his eyes filmed over from the incredible heat. His arms were spread wide as if in embrace, the dirt on his face cracking and peeling away to reveal bright pink skin.
There was a press of people at Jake’s back, with nowhere for him to turn. Warren’s milky eyes locked on Jake, his arms still spread wide, and he lurched forward again. Jake backpedaled, bumping into several people and almost tripping. He caught himself, casting his eyes around him, trying to avoid that burning visage steadily approaching. All around him people were fleeing, scooping up children and retreating from the madness of the scene. He was caught in the middle, Warren so close now Jake could feel the heat from his blazing clothes.
Ah hell, Jake thought. I was done running anyway.
He lowered his shoulder and tackled Warren at the waist, hearing the bigger man’s breath come out of him in a soft whoomf, the flames from his burning hair and clothes licking around Jake’s head and arms. He drove his legs forward, raising his body up as he went, Warren’s arms seeking purchase on his back. Warren’s feet lifted off the ground, and Jake surged forward with all his strength and then let go. Warren went flying backward into the fire, the flames closing over him. He landed flat on his back in between several logs, the flames white hot above the red embers. Warren managed a sitting position, his mouth open and working but there was no sound, just the roar of the flames and the stench of burning flesh. The rest of the huge logs, stacked up tipi style, collapsed over the top of him.
Someone was slapping at Jake. He whirled. Elsie and another woman were putting out the flames that had blossomed on his shirt.
“Mom?”
Dawn Trueblood used her thumb to squash out the last of the burning fabric on his collar. Her eyes were very wet. “Is it really you, Jakey?”
Jakey. He had not heard that in years and suddenly he was five years old again, with a bruised shin. He looked past the scattered bonfire, and in the flickering light caught a glimpse of Darius and Rachel, her upper arm held tight in his grasp, slipping into the shadows of the forest at the edge of the clearing. “I’ll explain later,” he said. “I need to go get Rachel.”
She held his chin in her hand, then nodded. “Go get her,” she said. “Then come back to me.”
* * *
He plunged into the woods, too dark now to see anything besides the outlines of trees, the amorphous shapes of the alder and mountain maple. He didn’t need his eyes, though; he could hear Darius ahead of him crashing through the brush. The sound was louder than the howling wind, louder than the sudden rumblings of dozens of cars starting in the clearing behind him. Their headlights came on almost in unison, sending flickering lights racing through the trees. The crashing stayed ahead of Jake and he ran after it, the headlight beams fracturing into slotted bars, the trees casting long shadows out in front of him.
He stopped at the edge of a small meadow. The slumped remains of an ancient shelter stood in the middle, surrounded by twisted trees. The clearing was no more than a quarter acre in size, the thick spruce and fir forest flanking it on all sides. The moon highlighted the edges of the tall grass and shrubs, not frost-burned yet but close, close. The smell of autumn hung thick in the air, mingled with the smoke of the bonfire.
Darius stood in the middle of the clearing, bathed in the me
ager light from the fingernail moon.
“Where is she?” Jake asked.
Darius looked down at the grass and prodded a lifeless form with his foot. “She ran too far.” Behind him, his shadow moved in the backdrop of forest, a giant that twisted and stretched among the trees. Darius’s hair had become disheveled in his flight through the woods, and its shadowy silhouette spread, shaggy and wild, across the canopy of the trees. It looked different from the fine hair Darius had had the day before. Now it was coarser, with lichens or something similar stuck in its lengths—or growing from it, just like the moldy patch growing across the skin of his face.
“I’m going to kill you,” Jake said. He withdrew the skinning knife from his pocket and clicked it open. “Whatever you are.”
There was subtle movement on the ground, and behind and above Darius the shadow nodded its giant, shaggy head.
“I am here.”
Jake circled to Darius’s right, his eyes darting down to Rachel’s slumped form, then back to Darius. He moved through the tall grass, the tiny heft of the skinning knife curving into the fold of his palm. Henry’s boots squelched water as he walked, and his breath came and went in steaming clouds, snatched away from his mouth by the wind. By comparison, Darius was quiet, still, waiting for Jake to close in. He seemed contemplative, perhaps even peaceful, as though Jake’s threat to kill him had placated, rather than alarmed, Darius.
That’s not Darius, he thought. Don’t be thinking that. It’s something more, something worse. The distillation of whatever was underground.
And again the Question raced through his mind: How can you kill what’s already dead?
In the grass at Darius’s feet, Rachel moaned. Jake lurched forward, the old battle haze returning, a red cloud building around the edges of his vision. It was the blinding, exhilarating sensation of letting go, all the pain, all of it, just sliding away, pushed to the back of his mind. He darted forward, cutting toward Darius’s uninjured arm, the little skinning knife held low and close to his hip. He would rip the blade upward, would gut Darius as he had gutted countless hares, as he had sliced open hundreds of muskrats. As Darius had gutted Henry.
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